Application Info:

   

In the application, please include:

• a covering letter detailing: your interest in the partnership;
• a brief outline of your individual or your organizational aims and activities;
• the type of audience(s) you or your organization addresses / works with;
• the type of work you hope to conduct in collaboration with our project;
• any public links to relevant work and projects.

   

In order to be eligible for this partnership call, individuals, organizations, or collectives must meet all of the below criteria:

• Work on the broader topic of digital and non-digital investigation
• Be currently working in the region Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)
• Strong dedication to supporting and engaging with civil society
• Proven track record of conducting training / workshop events
• Have trusted access and experience to work with local constituencies
• Have access to an existing network of other local and/or national organizations and initiatives
• Have the capacity to carry out these activities by June 2023
• Ability to report on activities by 15th July 2023

   

Partnership goals:

We would like to connect with partners, in order to use, share and adapt knowledge on investigative techniques and tools with their communities. We are looking for individuals, organisations or networks to partner with who would like to:

• Run events to introduce and contextualize the ETI Kit for their communities
• Run investigative workshops (using the ETI curricula)
• Contribute to improving our materials based on feedback from trainers and participants
• Outreach/distribute existing materials
• Create something new based on our resources (e.g. translation, adaptation, research, podcasts, videos, games, etc.)

Activities would need to take place between April and June 2023; final activity reports will be due no later than 15th July 2023.

   

Covering Letter

NAME

Dear partners of Exposing the invisible,

I'm a code developer, sound and digital artist, an active participant in diverse and transdisciplinary art/humanities/tech/science groups and collectives from Colombia.

In this communities I have been a facilitator and developer of moldable civic tech to enable digital tools creation and/or interconnection, allowing individuals and grassroot organizations to collect and analise various types of data and digital media to amplify their voices.

The tools and workshops that I'm being able to develop and facilitate are allowing empowerment of individuals and several grasroot communities via digital publications like: visualizations, wikis and web pages, that show and encorage other people to learn and train digital skills in order to develop critical use of digital tech.

Some examples of this projects and work are:

• HackBo: I'm member of a bogotá hackerspace, where many communities coexist and develop projects.

  More info at: https://hackbo.org/

• CandidatosEnDatos: (Candidates in data) a prototype to make visible and catalyze new and emerging forms of citizen participation, co-governance and transparency by visualizaing the discourse of political candidates for the previous presidential elections in Colombia.

  More info at: https://mutabit.tiddlyhost.com/#

• Grafoscopio community workshops: live coding and real-time “wikified” workshops to write documentation and data narratives within and with other communities in Global South to Global South tandem. For example:
  • this documentation was developed from a shared workshop between the HackBo Community in Bogotá, Colombia and the Copincha Makerspace, from Havana, Cuba.
    • https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/grafoscopedia/uv/index.html#Data%20Roda%2073.
  • (anti)hackathon for the Open Data Day 2023 celebration called: Data Week: From community data to chatbots.
    • https://docutopia.sustrato.red/s/dataweek:16
    • https://mutabit.com/dataweek/

• SOLE Colombia and mutabiT: web app to diagnose, evaluate and propose technical solutions for different grassroots Colombian communities in low tech/connectivity settings.

  More info at: https://voltaje.solecolombia.org

• Suratómica: (art, tech and science network) participation in different art and technology workshops.

  More info at: https://creacionarteciencia.online/index.php/Ruidajo

• CRATILA: (sound creation network) sound expositions and concerts exploring the relation of sound and diverse practices.

  More info at: https://cratilar.wordpress.com/

I'm interested in the partnership to be part of a broader community involved in supporting and encouraging wider citizen empowerment in participation, co-governance, transparency and grassroot mutual aid and training.

Specifically I want to develop a (anti)hackathon in various session with mixed in-person and tele-precense between April and May.

Generally the participants of this (anti)hackathons are diverse transdisciplinary activist, librarians, data analyst, musicians, artist, academics, scientists and journalists, between late teenagers to early 50's from local and foreing communities in network with HackBo and Grafoscopio community.

The (anti)hackathon (in the form of dataweeks http://mutabit.com/dataweek ) will focus on introducing, exploring and commenting the spanish version of “The Kit” from ETI and adapt the contents in our grassroot moldable tools to contextualize and share our local perspectives and experiences in relation to “The Kit”. Usually this means a production of local pocket infrastructures, which are simple, extensible, self contained, local first, and work in a wide variety of hardware and connectivity settings. Such pocket infrastructures will host, interconnect adapt and extend “The Kit” to Global South contexts and circumstances, starting with our local ones. This pocket infrastructures include public interpersonal wikis, which are ways to enable the dissemination and broader exploration of the “The Kit” guides in the network of local and foreign grassroot communities.

We are leveraging on more than 700 hours of community workshops (from 2015) of the Grafoscopio group in network whit other local and foreing grassroots communities, which give us various experiences and aproaches to build this digital tools and literacy for find and analyse information, archive and document community open knowledge and build critical narratives for and from local grassroot issues.

I think that this partnership is an excellent opportunity to learn, share and feedback over the diverse practices and experiences of the Tactical Tech network and to further the synergies between different communities and projects around the globe.

Thanks for the resources, space and opportunity to connect and share.